Efficient burning of gases emitted from torch tips, particularly those used for cutting and welding, depends upon constant maintenance of the bores of the orificies of the torch tips since the shape of the flame and the combustibility of the mixture is determined by the pressure and orifice diameter. During burning of the gases emitted from the torch tips, various forms of hard and soft extraneous matter collect in the bores such as carbon, welding flux and small particles of metal or weld spatter. In order to maintain a hot flame of the desired shape, the welder must periodically stop and clean the torch tips. This can occur as often as four or five times each hour. A common tool for this purpose is a tiny drill or wire rasp which the welder inserts into each of many bores in the torch tip, moving it back and forth to loosen and remove the extraneous matter. The small rasp is either held in a small collet on a hollow handle containing a series of rasps of varying diameters to be used for various sized bores and replacements for damaged and broken rasps, or in another version, a variety of small rasps are hung on a common pin in a small case. In one such holder, 12 different diameter sized rasps are used to cover only a range of diameters from 0.021 to 0.073 inches. Currently used sets of tip cleaners also consist of one box of fine straight wires and one box of heavier straight wires using 24 to 30 wires per box. Each of these individual cleaning elements is so small and fragile that the welder must remove his gloves to handle and use them. Once his gloves are off, he has to carefully select the wire to fit the bore before inserting it to clean the orifice. Because of his reluctance to stop welding or cutting to remove his gloves and follow these steps to maintain a proper flame including taking the wire containing box out of his pocket, opening the box, reading the wire numbers and with two fingers awkwardly guiding it pushing it in and out of each bore so as to not kink the wire or enlarge the soft exit lip, this reluctance of the welder usually results in inferior work. Hence, welder clean only when holes are stopped up, flames crooked and unmanageable. Dirty tips over-heat in seconds causing backfiring, lose the cut, lose 15-25% of cutting speed, cause flared kerfs, plate warpage, discarded tips, ragged cuts, numerous grooves on the sides of the cuts and tightly adhering slag filled with melted iron on the bottom of the cuts. The cuts must then be ground to finish and still may have a poor fit-up causing slow, excessive and rough looking welds with frequent repairs and many rejects. Gloves must be worn to protect the welder from the hot torch, melted parts and winter cold. Selecting the proper tip cleaning wire is tedious, slow and seldom accurate. There is therefore a demonstrated need for an improved method or tool for cleaning the bores of torch tips.
A study of the prior art has disclosed a variety of cleaning tools for small orifces. Such tools have reciprocating scrapers of various configurations including the oil burner nozzle pin of Bramming in U.S. Pat. No. 2,810,434, a bank of reciprocable helical rods for an air conditioning nozzle in U.S. Pat. No. 2,812,531 of Ashley and a reciprocating scraper in U.S. Pat. No. 3,393,872 of Rankin. It is doubtful that any of these approaches would be suitable for the tips of cutting torches since gas welding and cutting torch tips are made of very high purity copper for maximum heat conductivity and are therefore quite soft. These holes, from one to a dozen or more per tip are easily and frequently damaged by present cleaning methods.